Known in the art presently is an airborne vehicle, comprising a fuselage, airfoils tandem-arranged along the fuselage, a power plant arranged underslung with respect to the airfoils, aircraft flight controls, and alighting gears (undercarriages) (A2 PCT/DE 82/00179).
An increased area of the airfoils of the airborne vehicle due to the tandem arangement thereof along the fuselage and underslung arrangement of the power plant with respect to the airfoils, as well as due to interaction between the air and gas flows, result in improved aerodynamic characteristics of the airfoil; however, the task of increasing the useful load up to a few thousand tons of cargo stowed in the fuselage cannot be achieved. Moreover, no possibility of vertical take-off and landing is provided.
Attempts aimed at improvement in the performance characteristics of an airborne vehicle, attaining an increased load weight and a posibility of the airborne vehicle basing on short runways resulted in the development of the "flying wing" configuration of an aircraft with the spanwise load distribution.
One prior-art airborne vehicle is known to comprise a wing-shaped fuselage incorporating a fuel compartment and a cargo compartment, both being located lengthwise of the wing span, a power plant featuring an upper configuration above the airfoil, mechanical lift-increasing devices for flight control, and alighting gears (cf. Lange R. H., Journal of Aircraft, 1988, No.5, pp. 385-392).
Use of such configuration enables one to reduce the direct running costs by fifty percent compared with a fuselage-type airborne vehicle; however, problems involved in low effectiveness of the wing-landing device remain unsolved up till now.
Known at present is an aircraft available from Lockheed Corp. (Ring Wing), comprising a fuselage, a ring wing, a fuselage-mounted power plant, flight controls, and alighting gears. The layout and construction of said aircraft make it possible to considerably decrease the induced drag of the airfoil and render the wing lighter in weight by fifty percent (cf. "Special-configuration aircraft" by D. A. Sobolev, Moscow Mashinostroenie Publishers, 1989) (in Russian).
One more airborne vehicle is known to comprise a fuselage, a single-rotor system consisting of an airfoil and a fuselage-enclosed fan with an adjustable angle of blade setting, flight controls, and alighting gears (A2 PCT/EP 89/00489).
However, limited-area airfoils prevent transportation of large-weight cargo.
An airborne vehicle is known, wherein with a view to improving its performance characteristics and increasing the weight of useful load, use is made of a single-rotor aerodynamic lifting system appearing as a spanwise constant-airfoil supersonic wing provided with jet engines at the ends of the wing blades (A1 US No3,116,040).
However, the aforementioned single-rotor system fails to provide very high thrust forces.
A single-rotor aircraft configuration may be used in a combined transportation system, said configuration being of the two-row type, wherein the blades of each row rotate in the opposite directions, and the system has a power cable for transmitting power to a ground transport vehicle (A1 US No.3,149,803).
Such a combined transportation system involves generation of much power to supply the ground transport vehicle.
A prior-art cargo aircraft is known, wherein spares made of hollow tubes are provided in a rectangular wing over the entire span thereof, said spares being arranged along straight lines in said wing, while the tubes are arranged in tandem along a chord so as to fall within the limits of the wing section. This aircraft configuration is aimed at attaining a higher load ratio and facilitating cargo handling operations (A1 SU No.847,907).